Wednesday, October 31

Sometimes!?! (Thanks to Paul the Spud of Shakes for the pic.) And remember ma hunnies, there is more than one way to cook a pumpkin. And this is one of my favorite Cake songs to dance around the house to.

Tuesday, October 30

Several people have told me I just need to embrace the whole Tina Fey thing. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to photoshop this image and show me how.

BLACKWATER:

It's okay, Blackwater isn't getting special treatment...Bushco wants the bad Arabs at Gitmo to have immunity from prosecution, too.

And then there's the Telecoms. Blek.

LAST NIGHT'S SALON:

Sorry guys, somebody already did Hatebook. I don't know why we didn't look it up last night. But it's still a great idea. And we did run with it. Thanks.

And yeah, then we discussed Pammy. (Thanks Morse) I woke up this morning happy and refreshed and I STILL can't figure out how she can't know what this looks like, except she's been hypnotized by John Bolton.

A little unusual vlog I'm having trouble sleeping this morning and have a day away from computer to look forward to, so no time like the present, etc. First vid is me looking tired and talking hoarse (yeah Dad you don't have to worry about too much makeup in this one, but dang girl you need to stop sleepin' in your earrings) but it's short, explains where I was yesterday afternoon, and the second video. which is not me, is more about the exhibit I attended. It's 5:15 long, and if you haven't seen it I hope you will watch.

Sunday, October 28

It's 37 Days Until Zappadan. And Paul wants to know which musician is John The Baptist to Frank Zappa's, well, maybe we're taking the whole religiousity of this holiday a little too seriously. But if you have a thought leave it over at Paul's post so we can keep 'em together. I have always appreciated Frank more as a political philosopher than as a musician, but here he Done Good. In fact, lovely.

According to Wikipedia the controversy centres around the following issues:1/ Whether Intelligent Design can be regarded as science.2/ Whether the evidence supports Intelligent Design.3/ Whether teaching Intelligent Design is appropriate.

My position on these is:1/ No.2/ No.3/ No.

Yup.

More cool religious links. (Yes, religion can be cool!)Thorsmark has the best lengthy description of what blogs are and why they matter that I've ever read. Start halfway down the post under the heading, "Why should we care about blogs?"

The wonderful blog The Revealer tells us that once again, the claims that the religious right are dead are, well, overstated to say the least.

How the hell can the MSM have a hundred articles on Miss England being too thin to win Miss World and not one on why is the stupid Miss World "competition" being held in China?

Oh sweet Jeebus. They had big controversy in 2002 when they planned to hold the "pageant" in Nigeria. 200 people were killed in riots after "a young fashion writer in Nigeria wrote that Prophet Mohammed probably would have chosen one of the Miss World contestants as his wife."

This was after they moved the contest so it wouldn't happen during Ramadan. Not making that up.

It's time for the flesh parade (oh do they offer scholarships? Oh then it's fine and don't worry about the high lead content in the crown they've always had that) to move permanently to some nice non-controversial location like Guantanamo, where Miss Teen USA and Miss USA did a meet and greet in 2005 (but not with the bad Arabs).

A friend's definition of "favorite movie": You're having sex with the motel TV on (not part of my experience but I'll roll with it) and all of a sudden you realize the favorite movie is on. You tell your partner it's time to stop what you're doing and watch. Oy.

But if he has never seen Truly, Madly, Deeply...that would be the one. I'm gonna post a shorter clip because I want you to rent the whole thing if you haven't seen it. One thing I love about this clip is, it's two very intelligent creative people, obviously turned on by each other's brains, having fun together. (Nevermind one of them is dead and has come back as a ghost. Like that's a roadblock to a relationship. Please.)

Friday, October 26

Is this the best way to protest the war? I love me some Code Pink, specially their in your face activism for peace, believe me.

But I worry about creating sympathy for the lead spokesman of the bloody war criminal/PNAC'ers who run this country and who have picked a Black petite cultured manicured mouthpiece for just that reason.

Open thread on this and how can we subvert the paradigm effectively below.

Thursday, October 25

...but if you must know what kind of images give me an orgasm? This one did it for me. h/t to the lovely blog Knit Me, as in, knit me spank me do me and knit me again god oh god oh Damn Good.

The hand-dyed merino in the background would have been enough. The woman wearing this sweater calls herself Harlot, and we totally believe her. And if you don't think there's knitting in the bag she has slung over her shoulder, you don't know anything about anything, good bye.

My name is Alex. I guess an introduction is in order but I don't really know who I am. Actually Alex isn't really my legal name so even in my first words this starts to get a bit complicated.

I am a student, and if you ask any of my classmates who I am, you will probably hear that I am a 19-20 year old boy, well-read for my age, openly gay and that I am someone almost everybody likes but nobody knows. If you ask my mother, the picture may be somewhat different. I believe that she will tell you that I am a 27-year-old married mother of three.

Read the rest. Like all good writing it will tell you about the writer and you and humans and sorrow and joy and life and make you feel that you know more about all of that because you spent five minutes in front of a computer screen, just reading.

On the fiction front I loved the Wired essay by Lore Sjöberg, Resting in Pieces. Not sci-fi, not mere alternative history, it's more a musing on roads not taken from the standpoint of someone we would not care about, had it not been written just this way. I loved the moments I spent reading it.

And then I read a comment on another blog. I won't link though the blog deserves it aw hell it's Drifty, I'll link after all since the subsequent comments are grand and respond without troll-feeding. The commenter quoted below imho does not need encouragement. The commenter called us bloggers

"wounded birds, and the psychotically and physically maimed who need to pound it out at the keys, for some relief.

Does ANYONE who blogs not have some great personal psycho/sexual/gender adversity to overcome that I don't have to hear about?

Is there NO one out there, that's just normal?

Why sure there is, commenter, and you can find them by doing a google blog search for "kittens," "my cute baby nephew," or "cookie recipe."

One can write well about those things, but really: hold up any novel or memoir or political tract worth reading and there on the title page is a word "by" followed by the name of a wounded bird. And there in the pages is, we hope and pray, a bit of great personal psycho/sexual/gender adversity.

See, you can be an artist, hell you can be the blogosphere's Pablo Picasso. Or you can be a commenter who is looking for "normal" where staring at you through your screen is something so much better. Your choice.

Wednesday, October 24

No, not at all. I spent the day in deep meditation, working peacefully toward Blog Post Nirvana.

BTW Happy Birthday to Mr. BG and by happenstance it's also Comrade Kevin's Birthday. Free advice Kevin: look for someone born July 16. They'll put up with you for at least ten years, which is better than anyone born today has a right to expect. Go ahead, ask Kevin Kline and his wife Phoebe Cates. Today is that Kevin's bday, too, and Phoebe and I were born the exact same day.

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Sunday, October 21

I'm running this today because for a certain newly-minted nine-year-old boy There Is Very Little Else That Matters Except We Have To Wait Nine More Days For The DVD Release. So we can watch it with the director commentary "on." No I am not making that up.

Saturday, October 20

Apparently the latest cream of cool band. Great vid, but I coulda done without the building exploding at the end. I mean, I like art museums. and there's too much blowing up stuff.

Whoever directed this video has attended to at least one installation fo' sho. The installers usually find one point in the project when it comes to them that, given that it's three in the morning and the installation still isn't half ready, they could instead blow the whole exhibit up with half a stick and call it "carnage art". In fact, let's dedicate this song to Morse.

Seeing as I'm probably already on double-secret probation from certain concerned feminist blogger's collectives... for my panties, references to titty-fucking, not to mention my occasional admiration for things George Will has said, I might as well come clean and admit the rest.

Yes he is a douchebag. And yes, from the safety and comfort of your laptop screen*, the two young women have, as the auteur of HCwDB, Douchebag 1, would say, "poetic boobies of boobage poetry."

*In other words, you don't have to attempt conversation with them about YOUR latest post quoting George Will. Do. Not. Attempt.

I can only read HDwDB about once a week. Otherwise my sides hurt too badly. And you are either like me and applaud DB1's book deal as a victory for all of us, or you think it another end of civilization as we know it. Okay.

2. I'm addicted to the morning drive show Lex and Terry. Not only is it occasionally eye-rolling sexist (Drunk Bitch Friday is particularly unfunny on the face of it, I admit) it is a, (gag) ClearChannel product. And I can't get enough.

Lex and Terry are guys. They talk sports, and I don't know what they are talking about, and I absorb the testosterone like a sponge anyway. They give love advice to men and women. (And in a great irony, they seem to assume that all of their women callers are hot chicks and their men callers are douchebags, unless proven otherwise. Women callers who clearly use men or are otherwise treating fellow human beings poorly get called on it. Men callers who claim to be in monogamous relationships are told to behave like adults. It's very refreshing.)

Sue me. I can't get all uppity about two guys whose website has a countdown clock like this:

3. I love love love certain men's magazines.

Yeah Maxim (aka the magazine for guys who can only aspire to be douchebags) stays on the magazine rack unread. But given the choice between Mother Jones and Esquire, I pick the "Women We Love" issue every. single. time. Ditto for GQ. The November issue of Esquire is typically good, and not just for its profile of Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich (which is not online, dang it). I love their section called "The Vocabulary": "Yeatsian pounce" is reading Yeats or other like poets to "warm the cockles of both her heart and her loins." Hardly something that would impress a "hot chick" but would a "brainy chick" if you did it right. And then there's "Yoko," who is this,

But is also:

(n.) nickname for any woman who is a major force in her husband's personal and public life, significantly shaping his image and career through force of will, personality, or a whole lot of red hair. Can be added to the last name for comedic effect: "Yoko Bryant," "Yoko Kucinich."

I like new words and stuff. I also like letters sections that have the cahones to run "Context-Free Highlights from Letters We're Not Running."

All of this brings me to two life experiences. I remember in 9th grade thinking I would go to Smith College (I was a legacy, my paternal grandmother was class of '20 and great aunt somewhere around there, too.) By tenth grade I realized that every friend I had was a boy. I didn't talk to girls at school very much at all. Ever. I did not apply to Smith.

I also remember when the National Museum of Women in the Arts opened several years ago. My mother, an artist and a fine one her own self, said she would not want to be included in such a project. She called it a ghetto.

Not gonna separate ourselves from the menfolk, is what it means. Take it, Patty Loveless:

You came here to college to learn the language of power - to be empowered. If you want to succeed in business, government, law, engineering, science, education, the media, if you want to succeed, you have to be fluent in the language in which "success" is a meaningful word. ...

Is that what this is about though? That good funny writing based on politics and social commentary must somehow come from dominant paradigm (meaning male) language?

I don't think that's it.

It's true, dear reader, I do not know exactly where this essay is going, but I don't want it to turn into a 1980's graduate school paper: Blogs, Boobs, Brains and Bravery: Humor and Gender in Early 21st Century Electronic Media. Don't make me write what I wouldn't want to read. No, this essay is all about ME.

And yet someone (okay yeah a guy) told me recently that the appeal of my blog to male readers is that many men can't talk politics with their girlfriends and I'm a surrogate. Oh really?

I've been working on this post for about three days and as one friend told me, "Leonardo said art is never finished, only abandoned." So here. We'll continue this conversation in comments.

Friday, October 19

Jezebel (of course) (and tip of something tasty to baabaabaab for sending it to me xo)

Activists are sending women's underwear to the Burmese junta responsible for killing all those monks because, among other retarded things, the dictatorship believes touching a woman's panties will "make them lose their power."

Monday, October 15

Blogger is gonna have a "scheduled outage" at 4 Pacific, they say. I remember the good old days when unscheduled outages happened every five minutes! We blogged barefoot in two feet of snow and were grateful to be able to download an occasional .gif image of a thinner, blonder Britney that we would mash with Windows Paint to a picture of John Ashcroft letting his eagle soar. I'm telling you, kids today don't know blogging like we blogged.

Sigh. At 6 Pacific 9 Eastern and do the math in between we have Skype Salon. Please join us it doesn't take Skype equipment, you just need to download Skype here and click the box above. Hope to see you there.

Sunday, October 14

Because seriously, when I turned on NPR at 8 this morning and the first words outta Nora Raum's** mouth were "Condoleeza Rice" I knew I could turn the radio off with impunity. The rest of the day's decisions should be so easy.

Nora Raum reads news for NPR part-time and is a bankruptcy lawyer the rest of the day. She clearly accomplishes more in a day than the Secretary of State. Just saying.

Wednesday, October 10

No fewer than three fellow bloggers sent me the story about the Alabama Baptist minister who died, alone and at home, with a condom-covered, well, appendage in his nether regions while wearing two wetsuits.

Poor bastard.

I replied to all of them that if this story had not broken yet I wouldn't run it. The guy is not an elected official, and I don't care if he used to work for Falwell he didn't at the time of this incident. If he had been an elected official, even if he did not make any stand on gay rights, then all bets are off and he gets it up the butt again more ways than one.

It also makes a difference that he was in the privacy of his own home and that now he's dead. If he was merely arrested and/or doing this in public or sumpin' that is also fair play.

We liberals are all about "live and let live" and "do what feels good" unless it involves hypocrisy from fundy types. But let's face it, this guy had a seriously funky fetish and he kept it to himself. Wetsuits are expensive and he needed two. And apparently he couldn't tell his wife or anyone else so he'd have a little safety buddy to watch for signs he was getting into trouble and to get him out afterwards.

publically urinated....at an outdoor car wash...while wearing a skirt...in front of several children...and apparently when the police arrived...he offered the men in blue...the oral sex.

The police spokesman said, in a moment of demure understatement and passive-tense reserve, that "alcohol was involved."

There was apparently a bottle of Oxy pills in his car as well. I wonder if his car radio was tuned to Rush? Now see, if I found out that Rush Limbaugh had even LOOKED at a rubberized diving suit while whoring it up in Cancun...see the difference? See?

Back for a minute to the arrested pee-pee skirt minister: that guy deserves to have his name, Tommy Tester, (oh now you know I couldn't make that one up) and picture pasted all over the internet tubes. It's all a matter of journalistic standard practices, people.

Tuesday, October 9

I also want to take this opportunity to say happy birthday to my stepdaughter VEL, who is furthering the family's reputation as intellectual lightweights by getting her Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from Cambridge University, England. Have a birthday as lovely as you, dear.

Monday, October 8

I totally forgot today was Dennis Kucinich's birthday. Okay, I'm a baaad commie. Hope to see you at salon and if you are a blogger and have an October birthday let us know in comments and I'll do some kinda panties cake thing later this week.

One thing I really hate about press coverage of the candidate's wives is the sense that they are so often treated in the media like Barbie dolls rather than actual women. Then I just decided to go with it.

Geri Thompson Barbie: Google image search brings up 177,000 Barbies matching the description of Jeri Thompson. I picked this one because I didn't have to re-size it.

Fred Thompson's first lady herself is quoted in a recent AP article: Mrs. Thompson said, "I almost think they had to fabricate that trophy-wife stuff because there's nothing interesting to say."

Wow, that's really interesting.

Elizabeth Kucinich Barbie: comes with a Bachelor's degree in Religious Studies and Theology and a Master's degree in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent, along with a vegan Whole Foods shopping bag.

Curious technical question. Technocrati has been showing us on the ping page as not having been updated in 24 days, yet it will pull up the current pieces. I thought this might be happening to all Blogger 2.0 accounts. Any insight?

My response:

IMHO Technorati is fucked up. Constantly. My pings are never accurate, etc. Links will appear days after I've seen the traffic come in on Statcounter. I'll post something on this this morning and see what others think.

Email inquirer number two:

Is switching from Blogger to Wordpress and is having a challenge getting a decent statcounter on the site. If a Wordpress guru wants to help with this, let me know. bluegalsblog AT gmail DOT com. I'll send on your email. Thanks.

Friday, October 5

While the corporate media wraps their little brain around the fact that our Justice Department is pro-torture, Fresh Air has a great excerpt from Garry Will's new book, describing the events leading up to the Massachusetts execution of Mary Dyer, Quaker, in 1660.

Thursday, October 4

This is the leader of the free world. h/t Driftglass. I'm not just going for the free cupcake:

[President Bush] offered a pointed description of his job.

"My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions," the president said.

He elaborated on that point later.

"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

Please, let's find a way to replace this man with a more intelligent and more eloquent leader. Using that alone as the standard for selection, I nominate this person:

You know, all of the jokes are old now. I'm not really laughing anymore. Gimme that cupcake.

Wednesday, October 3

You have probably seen this and yeah, it's an AD. But for once I think the message transcends the sales pitch and dang if I don't endorse this message. A. and A., this one is for you, my beautiful, beautiful, girls. [And I particularly endorse my daughters' current sense of what "gorgeous" is.]: